MENTORSHIP SESSION :: Louise Fedotov-Clements

ARCHIVO LAB'2026

Jan-Jul 2026

PHOTOGRAPHY, ARCHIVE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINARIES

VISUAL PRACTICES AND ECOLOGICAL THINKING

Archivo LAB'26 supports artists whose practices engage with the unseen, the spectral, and the interconnected in times of ecological crisis. With a particular focus on photographic archives—understood both as material traces and speculative tools—the LAB'26 invites proposals that explore how photography and its archival infrastructures can shape ecological imaginaries and activate new relations of care. Emerging from the thematic framework of Haunted Archives of Livingness, the program invites visual artists, photographers, and practitioners to approach the archive not only as a repository but as a porous, living system: a site that preserves, decays, regenerates, and resists. Projects may explore the role of photography in embodying memory and omission, presence and erasure, the human and the more-than-human, engaging with issues such as environmental devastation, extractivism, climate grief, and digital materiality. 

Through the lens of the politics of care, participants are encouraged to trace invisible histories, overlooked relationships, and affective resonances that emerge within ecological entanglements. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: found imagery, vernacular collections, speculative fictions, data imaginaries, as well as embodied practices of looking and remembering. The LAB'26 fosters experimental, interdisciplinary, and non-extractive methodologies, encouraging practices rooted in situated knowledge and ecological sensitivity. Emphasis will be placed on collaborative engagements and on reimagining the role of visual culture in articulating new forms of environmental awareness and responsibility.​

GUEST MENTOR

LOUISE FEDOTOV-CLEMENTS

Photoworks Director, UK

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Louise has been the Director of Photoworks since 2023, where she leads the strategic vision and artistic direction of the organisation. Established in 1995, Photoworks is an international platform focussed on the development of photography through a programme of exhibitions, residencies, publications, engagement, the biennale Photoworks Festival, the Ampersand Photography Fellowship and the Jerwood Photography Awards. 

She is the CoFounder/former Director FORMAT Festival. Previously she was Artistic Director QUAD, a centre for contemporary art and film; National Curator of Contemporary Art, Forestry England, and currently Jury Chair of Earth Photo with the Royal Geographical Society, Forestry England and Parker Harris.

As a creative director since 1998 Louise has curated commissions, festivals, publications, mass participation, film/photography programmes/exhibitions, juried and mentored worldwide. www.photoworks.org.uk